Lament for Cyclingnews.com

"Davey Crockett" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

It isn't a site I visit very often, but today I was referred there in
an email

Sheesh. Half their "News" is two-three days old, sometimes poorly
written, and often contains bits that are obviously stilted
translations of items culled from non-anglo news sources.

Some f!rk!n News site

--
Davey Crockett

Is Daveys cup half empty of half full?

I wish they had more money, so they could do better. They work within a very
tight budget, last time I spoke with Jeff, not sure, but I doubt they have a
much bigger budget now, maybe even smaller, so I don't fault the editors,
just the owners for being poor or not putting more money into the site!
However what is quite remarkable about cycling worldwide despite as big as a
hit its taken from drug scandals, losing sponsors and such, is that there
are more sites then ever that specialize on everything from grade percents
to team transfers. That's a good thing for the fans, but not for sites that
want to be central players and control everything. Every site that pops up,
no matter how small, lures readership away from CN at times, but that's the
way the cookie crumbles. I do like CN, but I often feel they try to cover
too many events. I would rather they cover all the major classics, stage
races, major NRC events, World Cup races, etc, and don't sweat the small
stuff so much. I don't like it when you follow a smaller stage race, then
they don't finish it! You used to see a lot of that on CN, but I like CN's
format over Velonews anyday, and their archives, which Velonews lacks a good
archive. Can you imagine an online Velonews archive going back to the 70's?
Now that would be interesting! I think it would tremendously interesting! So
get to scanning Velonews!!

GBMT

Davey Crockett said:

"GoneBeforeMyTime" a écrit profondement:

| Is Daveys cup half empty of half full?

Despite the fact that Davey never touches alcohol, his cup is always
full 😉

But it can be difficult getting timely results which is the main
reason I abandoned my SixDay site. I did have road news there and
other items, but the Six Day organizers became more and more stingy
with the news and finally it was pretty obvious that they were holding
back until more prominent sites - VeloNews, CyclingNews, etc - had
published before they would give me anything.

I did have a good following though, and got over 400 emails when I
abandoned it. On any day in the sixday season I would get up to 10000
visits, around 6000 of which were unique, the rest of the visits being
users checking back.

Also I offered a daily newsletter and RSS/Atom feeds and there was
absolutely no UCE/spam on my site.

Maybe I should start it up again.

It's still there but heavy with popups since you have to pay to avoid
them although it's only around $7US per month which, if one ignores my
equipment and ISP costs, was my total monthly budget.

Davey, if you care to restart it, I already have a hosting plan for my
own sites, and it wouldn't be a big deal to add an additional one,
including some sort of CMS to make updating nice and easy.

I'll even contribute a custom domain name if you can come up with one
you like that isn't taken.

-RjC, VP Marketing, wiredcola.com
Wired Cola is a division of Globadom LLC. Globadom: The World is Just
Enough.

"Davey Crockett" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

"GoneBeforeMyTime" a écrit profondement:

| Is Daveys cup half empty of half full?

Despite the fact that Davey never touches alcohol, his cup is always
full 😉

But it can be difficult getting timely results which is the main
reason I abandoned my SixDay site. I did have road news there and
other items, but the Six Day organizers became more and more stingy
with the news and finally it was pretty obvious that they were holding
back until more prominent sites - VeloNews, CyclingNews, etc - had
published before they would give me anything.

I did have a good following though, and got over 400 emails when I
abandoned it. On any day in the sixday season I would get up to 10000
visits, around 6000 of which were unique, the rest of the visits being
users checking back.

Also I offered a daily newsletter and RSS/Atom feeds and there was
absolutely no UCE/spam on my site.

Maybe I should start it up again.

It's still there but heavy with popups since you have to pay to avoid
them although it's only around $7US per month which, if one ignores my
equipment and ISP costs, was my total monthly budget.

By the way, where is Jeff working or what is he doing these days. He
seemed like a nice guy although Bill Mitchell was always a [censored]
Extaordinaire. Remember when he wouldn't publish the Tour Down Under
results because they wouldn't give him $10,000?

snip...

Jeff was working for Procycling and Bike Radar, but I haven't heard from him
for a while. Last thing I read was an article he did on Nicole Cooke.
Mitchell... I remember reading his stuff from the old CN days and I think I
remember that even Ausse readers were upset with him for the way he followed
Watt's troubles from the 90's, but its been so long, I can't exactly
remember. CN has plenty of competition now, compared to say the late 90's. I
like a lot of Euro sites myself, which without, cycling would be pretty
bland. CN and Velonews are not enough to fill my plate, but I alway used to
subscribe to several bike mags at a time anyway, so I am used to checking
other sources. One mag I really used to like was cycling weekly, it used to
cost me $100 bucks a year here, quite a bit back in the late 80's for a bike
mag subscription. With the internet we get quite a bit for free, so there is
no wonder that the number of people reading periodicals has dropped off in
recent times! I don't know if I miss having all those mags or not, I guess I
don't, just more stuff to store in the basement!

GBMT

GoneBeforeMyTime said:

"Davey Crockett" <[email hidden]> wrote in message

Quoted message said:

By the way, where is Jeff working or what is he doing these days. He
seemed like a nice guy although Bill Mitchell was always a [censored]
Extaordinaire. Remember when he wouldn't publish the Tour Down Under
results because they wouldn't give him $10,000?

snip...

Jeff was working for Procycling and Bike Radar, but I haven't heard from him
for a while. Last thing I read was an article he did on Nicole Cooke.

I'm not dead yet. I'm working for Future Publishing, mainly on
BikeRadar but also doing the odd feature for the mags (Procycling +
Cycling Plus).

Future bought CN last year and wanted to run it exactly as it was for
a while. After all, it keeps growing its traffic. There will be some
changes in the coming months that I'm sure will improve it without
messing it up.

Jeff

<[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

GoneBeforeMyTime said:

"Davey Crockett" <[email hidden]> wrote in message

Quoted message said:

By the way, where is Jeff working or what is he doing these days. He
seemed like a nice guy although Bill Mitchell was always a [censored]
Extaordinaire. Remember when he wouldn't publish the Tour Down Under
results because they wouldn't give him $10,000?

snip...

Jeff was working for Procycling and Bike Radar, but I haven't heard from
him
for a while. Last thing I read was an article he did on Nicole Cooke.

I'm not dead yet. I'm working for Future Publishing, mainly on
BikeRadar but also doing the odd feature for the mags (Procycling +
Cycling Plus).

Future bought CN last year and wanted to run it exactly as it was for
a while. After all, it keeps growing its traffic. There will be some
changes in the coming months that I'm sure will improve it without
messing it up.

Although cyclingnews.com isn't the perfect site, for my money it's the best
one out there.

Davey Crockett said:

It isn't a site I visit very often, but today I was referred there in
an email

Sheesh. Half their "News" is two-three days old, sometimes poorly
written, and often contains bits that are obviously stilted
translations of items culled from non-anglo news sources.

I still like Cyclingnews. In fact, I like it a lot. I think of it as a
clearing house of results and race info, at least for most of the races I
care about. While the "news" may not be as in-depth as some people want, CN
does have a good mix of timely items, good pics, interesting letters, and
decent interviews. Do you know of a better site (for English speakers)?

Mark
http://marcofanelli.blogspot.com

In article <[email hidden]>,

Davey Crockett said:

Happy days. I was going to sue Mitchell's sorry Ass until I learned
that apart from his university paycheque, he didn't have a pot to [censored] in.

Why stop? Give him something to think about.
Publish the court findings in the forum where
he accused you. Without resources to pay
for legal help you could get a quick verdict. Yes?

--
Michael Press

Michael Press a écrit profondement:

| In article <[email hidden]>,
| Davey Crockett <[email hidden]> wrote:
|
| > Happy days. I was going to sue Mitchell's sorry Ass until I learned
| > that apart from his university paycheque, he didn't have a pot to [censored] in.
|
| Why stop? Give him something to think about.
| Publish the court findings in the forum where
| he accused you. Without resources to pay
| for legal help you could get a quick verdict. Yes?

It's a long time ago Mike, and I was badly miffed at the time.

But it's really laughable now and I'm not a vindictive guy. In any
case, any action is statute barred as I'm talking about 13+ years ago.

And the old VeloNet has been mostly inactive since the Usenet
NewsGroups became more popular and it morphed into cycling.org in
1995_1996 or somewhereabouts due to having been attacked by the
Numero Uno [censored] of the Cycling News outlets, "Velo News"

But VeloNet still grunts when you kick it! It was run on
http://cycling.org/ for which 😄icky Ettema from KiwiReich is still
keeping keeping the flag flying. Why VeloNet became cycling.org was
down to the Rabid Predatory Capitalist tactics of VeloNews.

Davey is of the opinion that anyone who'd read that rag would Worry Rats

You can read some of the sorry tale here
http://www.kycyclist.org/history.html

The link above doesn't tell the whole story and it was much more
bitter. But initially they backed off after around 20,000 subscribers
cancelled their subscriptions, but the [censored] came back again a few
months later with another cannonade!!

The cycling news business is really Dog Eat Dog and Davey has
experienced it up close and personal with his "Pro News" newsletter
and Website and later with "SixDay" when the "Mainstream" [censored]
cycling press variously attempted to shut him down, intimidate,
harrass and sabotage him.

And things haven't changed. As a matter of fact it has hotted up!!!

Davey used to write a daily column for Paul Allen's online rag -
forget what he actually called it now - Steven, or someone else might
remember - and the tales that he used to tell about the stunts the
competition used to pull would disgust any civilized individual.

Geez, and someone thought I should start my SixDay site up again 😉

Davey never in his life backed off from a fight, but on the other
hand, he doesn't go looking for one either.

But what the Hell. With Davey hearing, albeit faintly, the beating of
the wings of the Angel of Death, it might be a real gas to get back
into the fray.

--
Davey Crockett
-
Driving a Stake through the
Heart of the Politically Correct

Ryan Cousineau a écrit profondement:

| > | Is Daveys cup half empty of half full?
| >
| > Despite the fact that Davey never touches alcohol, his cup is always
| > full 😉
| >
| > But it can be difficult getting timely results which is the main
| > reason I abandoned my SixDay site. I did have road news there and
| > other items, but the Six Day organizers became more and more stingy
| > with the news and finally it was pretty obvious that they were holding
| > back until more prominent sites - VeloNews, CyclingNews, etc - had
| > published before they would give me anything.
| >
| > I did have a good following though, and got over 400 emails when I
| > abandoned it. On any day in the sixday season I would get up to 10000
| > visits, around 6000 of which were unique, the rest of the visits being
| > users checking back.
| >
| > Also I offered a daily newsletter and RSS/Atom feeds and there was
| > absolutely no UCE/spam on my site.
| >
| > Maybe I should start it up again.
| >
| > It's still there but heavy with popups since you have to pay to avoid
| > them although it's only around $7US per month which, if one ignores my
| > equipment and ISP costs, was my total monthly budget.
|
| Davey, if you care to restart it, I already have a hosting plan for my
| own sites, and it wouldn't be a big deal to add an additional one,
| including some sort of CMS to make updating nice and easy.
|
| I'll even contribute a custom domain name if you can come up with one
| you like that isn't taken.
|

Ryan, I might restart it, but am really wavering for a multiplicity of
reasons

How about you sent me your phone number and time zone to
[email hidden] and we could explore the possibility???

Since phone calls cost me nothing, if you give me a time I will call
you

--
Davey Crockett
-
Driving a Stake through the
Heart of the Politically Correct

Davey Crockett said:

Davey never in his life backed off from a fight, but on the other hand, he
doesn't go looking for one either.

But what the Hell. With Davey hearing, albeit faintly, the beating of the
wings of the Angel of Death, it might be a real gas to get back into the
fray.

The original Davey Crockett went out with a bang at
the last redoubt at the Alamo, or so the legend goes.

Donald Munro a écrit profondement:

| The original Davey Crockett went out with a bang at
| the last redoubt at the Alamo, or so the legend goes.
|

Here Davey sits, in a ruined Mission in South Texas anxiously waiting
for Colonel Houston to send Reinforcements..........

Always remembering that Crockett went to Texas because he was fed up
with Yankee [censored] and wanted out of the United States, and that
notwithstanding claims to his being the All American Patriot, quite the
reverse is true.

--
Davey Crockett
-
Driving a Stake through the
Heart of the Politically Correct

In article <[email hidden]>,

Davey Crockett said:

Michael Press a écrit profondement:

| In article <[email hidden]>,
| Davey Crockett <[email hidden]> wrote:
|
| > Happy days. I was going to sue Mitchell's sorry Ass until I learned
| > that apart from his university paycheque, he didn't have a pot to [censored] in.
|
| Why stop? Give him something to think about.
| Publish the court findings in the forum where
| he accused you. Without resources to pay
| for legal help you could get a quick verdict. Yes?

It's a long time ago Mike, and I was badly miffed at the time.

[..]

Quoted message said:

Davey never in his life backed off from a fight, but on the other
hand, he doesn't go looking for one either.

But what the Hell. With Davey hearing, albeit faintly, the beating of
the wings of the Angel of Death, it might be a real gas to get back
into the fray.

Thanks for that. I knew that it was all over.

--
Michael Press

Davey Crockett said:

"GoneBeforeMyTime" a écrit profondement:

| Is Daveys cup half empty of half full?

Despite the fact that Davey never touches alcohol, his cup is always
full 😉

doesn't sound that way. have you ever liked anything ?